Should I move to NYC? Please read

I have to make a really tough decision tonight and I’ve been thinking about it for months and I’m still very torn.

I’m 24 years old and I graduated from college in June of 2019. I had a brief six month period of new adventures at a really cool job in the mountains where I challenged myself, met amazing people, and did new things. But then last winter I decided to hunker down in my parents’ house and get a much less exciting part time job at a bakery so I could focus on my design school applications. About three or four months later the pandemic hit, and while that brought on new challenges, my day to day didn’t change as drastically as most peoples because I already didn’t have a bustling social life, I was already living at home, and my job was able to social distance. I’m coming up on a year at this job and in this lifestyle, and I’m feeling the weight of it. I’m a very introverted person, but in college I had plans with friends every day and talked to new people all the time, and I felt like I was growing out of my shyness and becoming more confident. Now the pandemic has made it easier for me to hide behind my social anxiety because socializing is actively discouraged. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic living at home with my family and like I’m regressing: they all know me as the shy, modest, slightly awkward version of myself that college helped me undo, and the pandemic is also now forcing me back into this box. My family is very critical and I don’t feel comfortable being anyone they don’t already expect me to be around them, and I feel like I’m really losing touch with my public identity (I know we all are). I don’t get dressed up because I have nowhere to go, I never do makeup because that’s not how my family sees me, I just feel less like an adult and more like a kid. People also often mistake me for a 14 year old because psychologically I think I act like one: timid and a little awkward. This wasn’t the person college or my cool job after college helped me to be, this is the person I was in high school. And I’m getting anxious that the more time passes, the more regressing I’ll do and I’ll come out of this pandemic in my late 20s and even less like an adult than I’ve ever been.

But a few things have also changed for the better: I now attend a great design school in NYC (but it’s online all year) and I somehow ended up dating a good friend from college when we reunited in August. Our relationship is surprising but great, and he also lives in NYC and is really excited that I’ll be moving there at some point. It feels like a lot of things in my life now take place in NYC: my school, my boyfriend, and I have more friends there than I do here. I also have a great apt option lined up: it’s just 700 a month (very cheap for New York) and it’s only a six month lease. The two girls that live there went to my college and even though I didn’t know them before a friend put us in touch they seem really nice and excited to have me. There are just a few problems:

1. The pandemic: this makes it so that we all don’t really have anywhere to go during the day, and living with roommates can be tough already. I’m anxious about being in an apt with the same two people who I don’t even know 24/7. I would try to escape to go on long walks and see my boyfriend a couple times a week, and his family says I’m welcome to stay with them as much as I want so maybe every few weeks I would go to his house in Long Island with him to get away. I would also be busy in my room with schoolwork which currently takes up a huge chunk of my time anyway, so much that I feel like I barely see my family here most days because I’m stuck in my room working. But...

2. The bedroom/workspace is a lot smaller than my current setup. I would be working where i sleep and sleeping where I work. As a design student we need a bit of space to do studio work — even though a lot is on our computer, I have crafty projects too, and it would be hard to spread out to do them in the apt.

3. I wouldn’t have a job anymore. I’d probably have to find one, although I have some money saved and my parents have offered to help me out because I’m a full time student. But before the pandemic hit my financial independence was very important to me and I made that a goal. I’m worried about working in New York if the cases rise. It just seems so hard to know what will happen.

All in all, I think moving to New York could be a healthy change, but it also seems somewhat impractical: it would make it harder for me to do my school work, I would be living in a much smaller space with two people I don’t know whereas here I have a decent sized house and it’s just my family. Also where I live is very walkable, wheres I’ve heard crime is increasing in new York and they might have to go under lockdown again. I just don’t know if the life that I would want there is feasible right now, especially because it’s the winter. Maybe waiting until the summer would be a different story. But I don’t know how much longer I can take sticking it out here with my parents and in my childhood bedroom. I’m also afraid of passing up this apt opportunity because everyone tells me it’s such a rare find, and I’m worried about what this would mean for my new relationship. We currently do long distance pretty well, but not moving right now could be tacking another 6 months onto our long distance thing. We would probably try to see each other once a month, but I’m not sure how sustainable that is.

What would you do?